island hopping

after diving i met up with my dearest friend, who came direct from china for a couple of weeks so that we could fulfill our life-long dream of traveling together. it was spectacular traveling alone, but it has been soul-quenching to share some of this trip with someone i love and respect so much. we've been island hopping for the past five days.

on the recommendation of some surf junkies i met on the ferry between lombok and bali, we ventured first to nusa lembongan, a small speck between bali and lombok, south of the gilis. the way it was described it sounded like it would be a pristine paradise, as if right out of the movie the beach: an unspoiled place where people of various backgrounds find themselves circled around a bonfire sipping on some brew--blissfully ignorant, sun scorched, sea salted, and free. lembongan was beautiful, but there were no stretching virgin white sands. what we found there instead was an island whose livelihood was seaweed farming. our first night there we walked along the beach watching the seaweed farmers bring back their days harvest. they scattered the tangled green hair of the ocean's floor out to dry, spreading it over blue tarps stretched across the beach from water's edge to their thresholds. farmers' wives waded through the carpets of seaweed laid out in front of their homes with rakes, turning the green knots so that every inch was dried and bleached. this wasn't a beach made for swimming, or even for lounging. alongside the farmers lugging baskets full of fresh seaweed from the gentle and shallow surf, boats were strung to the shore. out beyond them you could see white patches of sand beneath the water, where the sea bottom had been sheared its wool. this was a place of quiet, picturesque industry. we could hardly believe our luck, finding ourselves within a postcard. the sunset was the exclamation point at the end of the poem, punctuated by a beam of blue that stretched from the horizon like an arm pulling the cover of darkness down over the earth.

from lembongan we moved on to gili meno. on the day of departure we enjoyed our breakfast a little too much and missed our boat. the family who sold us the tickets were stupefied that we had f*cked it up, but quickly arranged an alternate route. a kind neighbor took us in his small farming skiff from nusa lembongan to bali. we ended up beating the boat we had missed and fancying the bumpy ride to the point of debilitating laughter.

gili meno was a honeymoon escape for us. we splurged on a beautiful one room beach hut with an outdoor bathroom and spent our time exploring the small island. the entire thing could be circled in less than 90 minutes by foot, the only alternative to that being a donkey cart. we felt a slight air of mystery about the island upon making our first exploration of it, as on the western side we found several seemingly abandoned resorts, with cabins overgrown and collapsing, the swimming pools festering under the hot sun and becoming swampy. not storm damaged but left to rot, like the end of civilization on the twilight zone. there was an inland salt lake, which gave the misleading impression that the island was big enough to get lost on. while this was not true, it was true that at night we walked the paths of the island's interior with flashlights and sticks extended in front of us to fend against creepy crawlies. best of all the memories born on meno, however, was of last night. there was a concert of local music in the village school yard at the heart of the island. we wandered there after dinner, finding a crowd of bored-looking tourists and docile tunes. we opted to check our email instead of partaking, but as we surfed the net the sounds on the street outside grew louder and more boisterous. two hours later the tourists had all returned home and tributaries of locals were flowing into the yard to dance and sing along with the band. we watched in awe from the outskirts until invited to join, and then we gave ourselves up to the throbbing crowd with sweet abandon.